I think if the 37's would have happened later in the series we might have seen that. But the episode didn't take place all that long after they were swept into the DQ, so the crew was still anxious to find that shortcut home.
Ronald D Moore
- Thread starter RobertScorpio
- Start date
RDM was right about what's wrong with VOY. However, I'm not sold on what he's done with BSG, either.
VOY could have been vastly improved by taking their situation as seriously as the BSG folks take theirs. But VOY also had the advantage of not having a premise that is mangled from the start - there never has been an adequate explanation for the Cylons' attack on the Colonies - and with a big chunk of logic missing from the series' start, the plotline will never make sense.
The Colonials feeling guilty about being the victims of genocide is every bit as annoying to watch as Janeway's multiple personality disorder and Starship Cornucopia ever was.
VOY could have been vastly improved by taking their situation as seriously as the BSG folks take theirs. But VOY also had the advantage of not having a premise that is mangled from the start - there never has been an adequate explanation for the Cylons' attack on the Colonies - and with a big chunk of logic missing from the series' start, the plotline will never make sense.
The Colonials feeling guilty about being the victims of genocide is every bit as annoying to watch as Janeway's multiple personality disorder and Starship Cornucopia ever was.
If anything I see it the other way around... After years on Voyager, they became a family...
But at the start of the mission, most of the people hated Janeway for stranding them in the DQ.
^ I can see that point too. But after 6 or 7 years of friends dying, constant battles to survive, and still being decades away from home I can see some crew getting tired and wanting to settle down on a nice planet. Especially if, as I'm sure happened, some crew became couples and started thinking about starting a family. The 37's planet might have been tempting then.
Maybe, but they had hope of moving forward... They were thrown forward 10,000 ltyrs by Kes... they used a transwarp drive to move forward another couple of thosand ltyrs on more than one occasion... so they were making progress home. IIRC, they had traveled about half way home in 7 years... if you had family at home, I doubt you would want to stay behind!
doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
Ron Moore is a god and we are the insects under his cowboy boots.
I think we might very well get answers to the questions so far unanswered regarding the origins of the Cylons, their God, and yes why they attacked the colonies and broke the 40 year Armistice etc as we head into the final stretch. But I do think trying to go back and examine certain actions taken by the Cylons against the colonials believing they were part of a well-organized overarching plan for some unknown goal is pretty pointless because most of them would be revealed as existing just to serve as a plot point at that moment for the purposes of that particular episode. BSG is not Lost or Heroes when it comes to sophisticated interconnected plotting and it is one of my beefs with BSG. It is nowhere the smooth narrative that the other two are in my opinion.
We've been pretty much saying that for 5 years and we still have to wait till 2009 to pretty much get what this damn series is about. I say too damn little, too damn late.
Well I guess I've just become more patient thanks to my experience with a show like Lost where answers might not be forthcoming for years. But I can understand your frustration because unlike Lost or Heroes, BSG doesn't provide a constant flow of new mysteries to keep you constantly feeling satisfied even though other mysteries might be set aside for periods of time. I've learned to really appreciate the way the show is crafted and assembled in a very skillfully and methodical way.
It probably also doesn't help that BSG's mythology isn't nearly as compelling or intriguing as Lost or Heroes' mythologies. Plot, interesting villians, pacing clearly aren't Moore's strong suites but in his defense I definitely see his writers pulling the threads together and I can see on the horizon answers forthcoming about the history of the Seven and the Five along with the force manipulating everyone.
I don't watch lost, but I wouldn't put Heroes in as a show that has a good flow. Last season was pretty weak in that there were so many characters and the plot just stalled. A lot of it just seemed uninteresting and maybe 3 episodes could have been taken out because they weren't needed. This is really a problem I have with arc based storytelling as a whole. You can do a good story, but each episodes should have something that stands on it's own. That's why I don't like the whole idea of "filler." How does a certain show fulfill me for a week and make things interesting. Shows like DS9 and Farscape did this which is why I rank them so highly.
Agreed. I look back at the first half of season 4, and I wonder why episodes like Road Less Traveled were needed at all. I mean they had a great opportunity to reveal something in terms of the relationship between Leoban and Kara and how they connected in Maelstrom but they used the episode to show your random mutiny. How does that advance the plot or how is it interesting. I mean either escape volocity and road less traveled or Road Less Traveled and Faith could have been combined. It also doesn't help that the one episode Nana Visitor was in was quite interesting but too short. We only met her once and it wasn't long enough to really believe the character or feel sympathetic to them or what they go through.
I don't want to carry this off topic, but yeah it is fruastrating when this is the final season, you say all will be revealed, we wait a whole year for the show to even come back, and now we wait another half year for things to be revealed. I liked how they ended the first half, but overall, Moore could have done a lot better with this so-called third part of the story. This is why I think Moore is a bit overrated. He doesn't seem to know how to follow through on different things (even though Home was a very good end to that one arc) and could be better. Also, what right does he have to bash the guy who allowed him to come onto voyager and then have fans say BSG is what voyager should have been when BSG isn't perfect in it's own right.
Well for the purposes of this discussion I was pretty much referring to season one of Heroes. I know many hate season two but it isn't IMO nearly as bad as many say. It certainly had its missed opportunities and threads that never went far enough or panned out.
I just rewatched season one of Heroes and found it just as good as the first time through. It was brilliantly done when it came to developing an epic saga. It had twists, suspense, interesting character pairings, a nice pace, juggled multiple threads expertly every episode, advanced the plot every week like a juggernaut, provided multiple new revelations every week. It had smart and interesting villians that were shrouded in intrigue. While you could certainly feel the writers' hands in moving the characters around where they wanted them to be for the purpose of the story, it never felt contrived always growing naturally out of the in-story events. And Lost is very similar.
But you don't have to be as ambitious as those shows to still have effective arc storytelling. DS9's Occupation arc and the Final Chapter are good examples with the ingredients I look for--interesting stuff happened, new revelations, nice character moments, suspense, surprise twists. I think what makes Lost, Heroes and DS9 work are the balance of character and plot. The writers are at ease with both sides of the equation.
Moore clearly isn't strong with plotting. He tends to usually use the plot in advance of the characters as opposed to treating them equally. BSG also has too many characters and as a result the narrative isn't smooth and doesn't have a nice flow to it. Now that isn't to say a vast cast is a bad thing but you need to have a better grip on it.
For instance Gaeta losing his leg seemed to exist just to give Gaeta a minor spotlight in the episode but failed to resonate. Adama leaves Tighe in charge but instead of making this the jumping off point for an interesting storyline it existed as a plot point. Caprica's defection to BSG hasn't been milked. She has just sat around in a cell. Baltar's cult could have potentially been interesting and it did develop but it wasn't interesting. The politics weren't interesting. Politics and political intrigue can be fun but not on BSG. Zarek is a plot device and never developed into a credible antagonist.
DS9 had Dukat, the Founder, Winn, Damar, Weyoun. Heroes had Linderman, Angela, Sylar. Lost has Ben.
DS9 had Dukat, the Founder, Winn, Damar, Weyoun. Heroes had Linderman, Angela, Sylar. Lost has Ben.
Well I actually sorta liked The Road Less Traveled. As for the relationship between Leoben and Starbuck we pretty much already have seen all we needed to in the previous appearances and I'm pretty sure that wasn't Leoben in Maelstrom.
Well I didn't find the fact that we hadn't seen her character before to have lessened my sympathy for her plight any more than it did in an episodic series where a guest character is introduced for just that hour.
Absolutely. He bites off more than he can chew and ends up spitting most of it out.
This is the internet.
What else would you expect.
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doubleohfive
Fleet Admiral
[/quote]
Perhaps, but its also entirely possible that these "filler" episodes were laying pipe for story points we are not aware of yet.
I don't know. I really liked "Faith" and mourned Nana's character at the end. It was a touching story and I disagree that she needed to be around for more than a single episode for the audience to establish a connection. Too, there is this tendency from fans to want more more more more of everything. That wasn't needed here.
That was SciFi's call, not the writers. Just sayin'.
1) I don't think Ron Moore ever once said that he felt Battlestar was "perfect". If anything, he rakes himself over the coals in his podcasts whenever he watches something he didn't like or later regretted doing. As for fans calling it "perfect" when compared to Voyager, how exactly is that Ron's fault? How exactly did he "have" the fans do that? Am I not actually enjoying the show and appreciating it of my own volition? Am I somehow being compelled by Ron Moore's evil voodoo?
2) I don't recall Ron Moore ever bashing Rick Berman personally; from what I remember from *that* interview, he merely stated what creative issues he had with the way Voyager was being written, how silly he thought it was that obvious issues inherent to the premise were being glossed over or otherwise inherently ignored, and that there was a markedly different attitude and envirionment in the Voyager writers room as opposed to those of TNG and DS9. Like it or not, given the similarity behind the premises of the two shows, Battlestar is infinitely more believable than Voyager ever was.
If it is Brannon Braga you're referring to, Moore clearly stated that there was some sort of professional betrayal involved that he (Moore) felt was wholly inappropriate for a work environment and has not, to my knowledge at least, expounded beyond that point. Further, Moore and Braga seemed to have made amends.
Again, my memory is sketchy but I feel like at least this stuff is accurate. If there's more to it that I'm not aware of, please do enlighten me.
005 and Startrekwatcher,
I too liked Faith. It was one of the highlights of the season and I did love Nana Visitor's character. My point though was how cool it would have been to see more of her character and really feel for her than we already do. More emotional impact is always a good thing when doing a drama. What about forming a councelor-like relationship between her and Roslin. That, and I really like Visitor as an actress and wish she was in at least one more. I don't really mind the one off, but the more we see her and understand her, the more emotional investment we have to her when the time comes. I'm just sayin' it was more of a missed opportunity than anything else, at least to me it was.
I didn't say Ron Moore said the show was perfect, I'm talking more about what fans want and how they put BSG on a very high pedestal. I was really hoping to be careful with how I phrased that. Moores fault really is with his own ego, which has shined through various times. I actually went back to read the interview and it wasn't as bad as I read the first time. Maybe it was a different interview, but I remember him saying that he didn't like the way the series was ran and stormed off. Evidently, this was what he said based on that:
I still think his ego got in the way. He's a senior writing by default even though it was Brannon's show? Ah, ok, whatever.
In terms of BSG, it's really the fans who have put it on a pedestal so high. Yes, this is the internet, and that happens, but then that means BSG is a really overrated (And I like BSG, to an extent of wanting to see how it ends) series. It and Star Trek are two different entities and it's not fair to compare them, no matter how bad or good each (Voyager or BSG) series was.
I too liked Faith. It was one of the highlights of the season and I did love Nana Visitor's character. My point though was how cool it would have been to see more of her character and really feel for her than we already do. More emotional impact is always a good thing when doing a drama. What about forming a councelor-like relationship between her and Roslin. That, and I really like Visitor as an actress and wish she was in at least one more. I don't really mind the one off, but the more we see her and understand her, the more emotional investment we have to her when the time comes. I'm just sayin' it was more of a missed opportunity than anything else, at least to me it was.
I didn't say Ron Moore said the show was perfect, I'm talking more about what fans want and how they put BSG on a very high pedestal. I was really hoping to be careful with how I phrased that. Moores fault really is with his own ego, which has shined through various times. I actually went back to read the interview and it wasn't as bad as I read the first time. Maybe it was a different interview, but I remember him saying that he didn't like the way the series was ran and stormed off. Evidently, this was what he said based on that:
I still think his ego got in the way. He's a senior writing by default even though it was Brannon's show? Ah, ok, whatever.
In terms of BSG, it's really the fans who have put it on a pedestal so high. Yes, this is the internet, and that happens, but then that means BSG is a really overrated (And I like BSG, to an extent of wanting to see how it ends) series. It and Star Trek are two different entities and it's not fair to compare them, no matter how bad or good each (Voyager or BSG) series was.
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That's not what he's saying. When he talks about being "senior partner by default", he's talking about their relationship as a writing team on TNG and the movies, before he came on board VOY. That's the way their working relationship naturally developed. As he says, when he went to VOY the positions were reversed, and that didn't work for either of them.
Sounds to me like both their ego's got in the way a bit, but I don't think that's something to hold against either one of them absent any other facts. A good creative person needs a healthy ego, I think.
Sounds like both of their egos got in the way ALOT
I don't think there are too many other facts to really consider. On TNG, Moore had seniority and was more of a mentor... I'm sure Braga learned from him, and Moore guided him well. Fast forward, and now Braga is the senior partner and Moore has to take direction from him... I'm sure it was difficult for Braga to try to "guide" his former leader, and to deal with ideas that Brannon didn't think were right for the show, or ideas that they couldn't follow because of network rules... and I am almost certain that Moore didn't react well to being told "no" by someone who he saw as beneath him.
They need to be confident... but sometimes, they can learn a lot by listening to others.
Well, we don't know the details of the break. What I was getting at is that had we been able to witness the entire chain of events that led to Moore leaving Voyager, we might conclude that one party was more in the wrong than the other. But since we weren't there, there's only so much we can conclude.
I'll agree with that. I'd say an inability to learn from what others have to say is one of the elements that distinguishes a healthy ego from an unhealthy one.
you got that right, he's his own best pr
even if half the time he's discussing how he could have done something better... or how he fucked something up...
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